Fifth strategic meeting

Yesterday we met in the university restaurant for the last strategic meeting, the fifth one. Originally (approximately in February:)) this meeting was intended to provide space for final check of everything related to the trip. As could have been easily foreseen, eventually there was a little bit more to talk about:)


We made final arrangements concerning few items on our packing list and were mostly discussing contents of so called Info kit (including all information we want to have available during the trip, e.g. basic descriptions of main tourist sights, contacts for embassies, important border crossings, specifics of tropical diseases and first aid and much other).

This week (starting Monday June 9th) is in fact the last one I can devote to preparations, due to logistical, technical, personal and other reasons. On the other hand, Zdenek needs to focus now on studying for his final bachelor exam that is to be taken next Monday, thus his final preparations will take place just few days before our departure (Friday June 20th).

I believe we both manage to get "ready enough" in time!
As for now, I'd say we are 86% ready;-)


See you soon, on the Fatal bye-bye party!

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Martin

Fourth strategic meeting

On May 28th 2008, with 22 fatal days to our departure, another - fourth - strategic meeting took place in a small town of Czech Republic - Horni Jircany!

Points that we discussed were:

• detailed plan of our trip - particular places we are going to visit
  
• particular items of our baggage that we were not sure whether to take or not
  
• fatal corporates :)
• details concerning fatal bye-bye party
• setting of rules and sharing of expectations
• various random stuff (doctors, medication, insurance, packing logistics, consultations of all kinds, travel guides, cash etc.)
  

This meeting was quite long and exhausting, especially when it came to the rules setting part. However the output we produced is of excellent quality and we believe it will make our trip more enjoyable and with less complications and misunderstandings within the fatal crew :)

As usually, we divided responsibilities and have set next steps, so everything should be ready for our fifth meeting which will take place on June 9th 2008.

As far as visas and vaccinations are concerned, we are almost all set - to our surprise, we have fought the bureaucracy at embassies well enough and received all visas with required validity and of required type. Martin still has a few vaccinations to go through (or to skip and die as a hero).

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Zdenek

Having rest after another successful meeting

PS: Well, we were not just discussing... and dedicated little time to practice, too. Zdenek had bad luck when tossing the coin for who shall try out our new toy, a pepper spray ;-) M.

Shopping meeting

Well, we've been planning for couple of months and the day of our departure is approaching in a considerable pace... but we still don't have a backpack, nor a mosquito net!

It's a high time to fix it.That's why we went shopping last Friday! :)

Although a shopping meeting doesn't explicitly belong to the concept of "strategic meetings", it could be very well compared to all previous ones of that kind, at least when it comes to duration. We started at 10:30 and finished at 17:30 - just because I had to go home, otherwise it would have probably taken much longer... we actually started really shopping that time:)

Performing on-the-spot quality check.
It was my task to prepare the plan:

• Lunch at the University (clarifying objectives and deliverables of the meeting - was skipped as the restaurant was closed)
• Army shop (to feel the spirit, get educated on how to survive in the jungle, try out fancy army wear and eventually buy few security gadgets and some other handy equipment)
• Rock Point, Hudy, etc. (to experience quality)
• Drapa, Hervis, etc. (to take advantage of economies of scale)

In reality... well, how would I say... as soon as we started to improvise a little bit in the middle of the day, the time plan had to be slightly reconsidered (= went to pieces:))

All in all, I'm sure it was a productive meeting, as usual:) Despite spending less than 200€ / 5000CZK in total, we managed to compare many products and acquired a fair overview of what needs to be bought next, where, and for how much money.The rest is just a routine shopping.

Besides, we discussed many related issues planned for the 4th str. meeting that is going to take place tomorrow.

In the picture: "Fatal shopping list" - each item is evaluated (receives points according to respective moving scales) based on its indispensability, physical dimensions including weight, cost and color. Shopping is really easy then!:)

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Martin

Dreaming of a fatal experience, with a brand new backpack!

Fatal bye-bye party! :)

209 days since me and Zdenek shaked our hands and decided to make this voyage happen,
114 days since our first strategic meeting,
37 days since we bought our flight tickets to India,

...and just 29 days to go!

Therefore it is our pleasure to announce we are organizing the...

FATAL BYE-BYE PARTY

Tuesday June 17th 2008
19:00
(place is to be specified)

Also, Zdenek is taking his final bachelor exam on this day. Let me wish him good luck and loads of persistence in upcoming rush period!

We are both looking forward to meeting many of you on this special occasion!

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Martin

No haircut, no shave...

To make our trip easier going and to prevent some unpleasant events from happening, we have decided to:

• look as shabby as possible to repel all potential thieves and criminals
• look as little attractive as possible in order to discourage all potential Asian females from approaching us (such distractions should disturb our traveling experience)
• look as poor as possible so all people would feel sorry for us and would accommodate us somewhere each night
• and last but not least, to feel and look like real travelers (since we wouldn't be able to achieve this in any other way :) ...)

Therefore, we will not get a haircut nor shave during our 3-months trip!

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Zdenek

Third strategic meeting

With 54 fatal days to our departure, we have met once again on 27.4.2008 at my house to discuss further details.

This involved mostly:

1. Time plan concerning our visas and final division of responsibilities
2. Brainstorming on complete equipment for our trip
3. Discussion on how we will be financing our expenses while abroad
4. Next steps concerning course of our trip

1. Time plan concerning our visas
We already have visas to India :) ! Hooray :) !

As a next step, we need to take care of visas to Thailand. Martin is in charge of that and while the granting procedure is really screwed up, he is fighting hard. Since we have no flight tickets to Thailand and are therefore not entitled to receive regular travel visa and transit visa does not help us much (we need to entry Thailand 3 times altogether), we will have to write a special letter to the Ambassador. And hope he will anticipate our request :) ...

Afterwards we need to obtain visas to Nepal and Vietnam and we are all set, at least on the bureaucratic issue! Visas to other countries we are going to visit will be taken care of on the spot.

2. Brainstorming on complete equipment for our trip
We finally have almost a complete equipment checklist! Some of our items are:

• beach purse
• shitty watch
• PEPO
• lubrication gel (and candles)
• 5 clothes pegs
• weapon and tear gas
• mouth organ
• ear plugs
• chewing gums
• crayons
• leadership books (wtf?)
• small pillow

We already found some equipment at home, this can be seen on the photos. We will probably have to buy 2 new cameras as well, since ours are piece of ... Other important things to be bought are tent and backpacks. (I hope they make one with a porter, because we are not going to carry all the stuff ourselves, are we?!)

3. Discussion on how we will be financing our expenses
We need to analyze how much our home banks will charge us for an ATM withdrawal abroad. I am in charge of this "analysis". Then we will decide how much money we are going to exchange in next 2 weeks.

4. Next steps concerning course of our trip
Martin proposed that he will put together the most important information about each country and its beauties. This material should help us to gain the necessary background and the particular decisions on where to go will be made during our trip on a daily basis. I am in charge of preparing the trip through India, since this will be our starting (hopefully not fatal) country.

Random news and other announcements

• Vaccinations are going excellent. We are (or will be) vaccinated against hepatitis A+B, typhus, meningitis A+C, cholera and rabies and are still alive. Martin will not manage the cholera cocktail, so it is strictly advised to take at least strawberry cocktail with him, just in case diarrhea occurs.
• Insurance is almost fixed, it is not that expensive as we have expected
• Martin is arranging our Prague-Vienna return bus tickets

Well, if we will manage to fight our school responsibilities (which does not seem that positive on my side) we should be departing soon :) ! Stay tuned.

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Zdenek

As usually, we had a lot of fun...

Plans are inflating fatally...

Fatal news: cannot step back!

We haven't updated our blog during past 3 weeks... however, quite substantial steps have been taken!

Flight tickets
After long preparations and considering especially Zdenek's tough agenda in June and in September, we just bought our flight tickets yesterday!! The Fatal trips gains the ultimate time span!

12 FATAL WEEKS
Friday June 20th 2008
Wednesday September 10th 2008

Due to unfavourable circumstances we had to pay a part of the total sum in cash. And what better place to choose than a branch of Komercni Banka next to the multifunctional complex U Hajku on Na Florenci street in Prague:)

So as to begin our backpacking experience in a mild way, we also decided to fly to Delhi from Vienna and our objective #1 would be to get there on time, not being ripped off and keep ourselves from digestive challenges:)


Vaccinations
It goes well, both of us have already our vaccination schedules settled. The only drawback of my stay in Canada impacting the Fatal trip is that there is not enough time for me to take an anti-cholera cocktail.

All the rest
As I've just returned from Canada 3 days ago, we are now ready for the next in-person strategic meeting to proceed with general preparations. Stay tuned!:)

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Martin

Vaccinations coming soon!

Preparations are getting more and more fatal.

Last days we have spent researching for vaccinations needed for our trip and looking for the best and cheapest vaccination centre in Prague. To my surprise, I have sent ca. 7 emails to different doctors and have received 5 answers, from which 3 I would rate as "very satisfactory". Based on those answers and based on our current research, we are going to get (re)vaccinated against those diseases:

• Tetanus
• Hepatitis A+B
• Typhus
• Polio
• Diphtheria
• Meningitis A+C
• Rabies
• Cholera
• Tuberculosis
• and possibly some more...

Well, it seems that if we will survive the vaccination, we will have a great trip :-) !

We are also going to buy a return ticket Prague-Delhi in following two weeks.

Martin is coming back from Canada in a few weeks, then more serious planning will come!

Actually I was about to put some pictures of the diseases here, but I became so disturbed by the photos that I have decided to put up something rather positive - so check out some of the places we are going to visit :-)

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Zdenek

Kouangsi Waterfalls, Laos

Taj Mahal, India

Petronas Towers, Malaysia

Coastline, Thailand

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Second strategic meeting

Three weeks have passed and we are meeting again!

Having met on time as usually (30 minutes later than agreed on) we drove to my house and had a romantic dinner with candles and soft background music. And a dog screwing around the table.

Because of the time pressure, we did not have that much time to do a decent research (Martin did actually most of the work), so we decided to focus on specifying the course of our trip and next steps concerning our fatal summer. Since borders of Myanmar are closed, driving or somehow getting through this country showed to be extremely difficult or even impossible. Therefore we had to replan the trip we are going to take.

You can see the map below.

On behalf of the fatal crew :)
Zdenek

(yellow = country borders, red = long way to take:),
green = facultative trips, blue = flights)

First complications

Two weeks have just passed since our previous meeting and our preparations for the fatal trip continue. Each of us, me and Zdenek, are responsible for half of countries on our actual destination list. It means that we are gathering information about visa, vaccination, the most significant travel sights, country specifics (e.g. culture, accommodation, transportation, politics, climate, currency) etc. to be ready for sharing and discussion during the second strategic meeting (coming soon!).

"My" countries are Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia and Myanmar (Burma) and it is the last one that has caused the first complications. As you may have noticed in the map that was created after the last meeting, we intend to go from India to Laos through Myanmar. To be more precise, we would like to go by train. And here it comes... I found out on multiple channels that most probably it won't be possible due to current military government that block many frontier crossings. It is highly recommended that tourists enter the country only by plain.

If this gets confirmed, it brings many implications, e.g. to fly to Myanmar from Thailand instead of India (because of visa), therefore a need to obtain a double visa to Thailand (because of repeated entry)... and above all to reconsider the order of all countries on our "flight plan".
Let's hope it requires just few slight rearrangements! :)

On behalf of the fatal crew:)
Martin

First strategic meeting

I can recall the situation quite clearly... having a lunch with Zdenek on Friday October 26th 2007, talking about various things as usually, but also coming up with a crazy idea to set off for a big journey. It shall be the biggest trip we have experienced so far and that will be pretty hard to challenge in future as well. Let's see... :)

Well, nice idea, but let's carry on with some appropriate planning!
Today, it is Tuesday January 29th 2008 and we are meeting again at Zdenek's place for the First strategic meeting.

What is on the agenda:

• set a rough timeline
• share our expectations (don't worry - we are not just bullshitting around, thanks to a decent preparation since Christmas)
• choose destinations
• create a flight plan
• fog out (vymlzit) the budget (uff... it was hard to precisely evaluate the costs of accommodation in Vientiane (Laos), transportation fees in Bangladesh or cost of female entertainment in Thailand... you can imagine, can't you?)
• check our bank accounts :)
• launch the blog (yeah!)
• and last but not least... set the next steps, of course!

We've been extremely productive and after 2,5hrs of ice breakers, we've decided the whole thing within another 5hrs.
See the map below to get a better idea about it. More detailed "output" of this meeting will be available soon.

Following pictures document the atmosphere of our First strategic meeting:

Martin & Zdenek